SPAIN: Guernica--40 Years Later

The bombers roared in low on a sunny
afternoon. Unopposed by antiaircraft fire or fighter defenses, they
pounded away for almost 3½ hours, Heinkel-111s in the lead, followed
by ponderous Junkers-52 trimotors. As fighter planes wove in and out,
strafing people on the ground, the bombers unloaded some 100,000 lbs.
of high-explosive, fragmentation and incendiary bombs on a small Basque
town in the green hills of northern Spain. When the bombers left, a
town had been smashed to rubble, but a symbol was bornstill evoked
for many by Pablo Picasso's best-known and most terrifying canvas.